Car Accident Lawyer in Glendale

What do Glendale’s crash figures show for car accidents?

In the California Office of Traffic Safety rankings for 2023, where rank 1 is the worst in the group, Glendale placed 53rd of 62 cities its size for total people killed and injured in traffic collisions, with 593 victims. That is better than most comparable cities. The same rankings put Glendale 55th of 62 for speed-related collisions with 74, 52nd of 62 for nighttime collisions with 51, and 47th of 62 for hit and run with 47. These are rate-based rankings, adjusted for population and daily vehicle miles travelled, so they compare Glendale with cities of similar size rather than reporting raw statewide totals.

Saying so plainly is more useful than the alternative. An argument built on the idea that Glendale is a uniquely dangerous place to drive would be contradicted by the state’s own figures, and so would the page making it. What the data does show is that a Glendale car accident claim rarely turns on a citywide pattern. It turns on the specific junction, the specific vehicle and the specific policy. One category is a genuine exception: Glendale ranks 14th worst of 62 cities its size for pedestrians, with 72 victims, and 2nd worst of 62 for pedestrians aged 65 and over, with 22. A collision between a car and a person on foot in Glendale therefore sits in a category the state treats as an outlier, and it is investigated accordingly.

There is also a local source most pages overlook. Glendale Police publish downloadable traffic collision files on the Department’s transparency pages, including quarterly reports on collisions, injuries and fatalities for 2025 and a historical 2017 to 2024 series. For a question about what has happened at one intersection over several years, those files come from the agency that investigated the collisions.

Who investigates depends on which road you were on. Glendale runs its own municipal police force, so a collision on a city street is a Glendale Police matter, with the Records Bureau at 131 N. Isabel Street and a records line on 818-548-3135. The 2, the 134 and the 5 are different. All three are state highway routes defined by statute, Route 2 running by way of Glendale under Streets and Highways Code section 302, Route 134 through the vicinity of Glendale under section 434, and Route 5 passing near Glendale under section 305. Vehicle Code section 2400(d) gives the Commissioner of the California Highway Patrol full responsibility and primary jurisdiction for the investigation of traffic accidents on state highways constructed as freeways, so a freeway collision in Glendale normally produces a CHP report rather than a Glendale Police one.

Ownership follows the same line, and it matters more than it sounds. Streets and Highways Code section 90 gives the Department of Transportation full possession and control of all state highways. So if the roadway itself contributed, a claim about a freeway surface, a barrier or a ramp is a claim against the State, presented to the Department of General Services under Government Code section 915(b). A claim about a City of Glendale street, signal or crossing is presented to the City, by delivery to the City Clerk or by post to the Clerk or the governing body at its principal office, under section 915(a). Both carry the six-month written claim deadline in Government Code section 911.2, which is far shorter than the two years Code of Civil Procedure section 335.1 allows against another driver, and the shorter deadline governs. The City Clerk’s office holds Glendale’s Claim for Damages Form, the City Attorney’s Office takes status enquiries on 818-548-2080, and the City’s own published estimate is that a claim typically takes 9 to 12 weeks to process.

Where is a Glendale car accident case filed, and what are the deadlines?

California is a pure comparative fault state, so a share of the blame reduces what you recover instead of ending the claim, and an insurer’s early percentage is an opening position rather than a finding. If the case is filed, it is filed where the crash happened. Los Angeles Superior Court Local Rule 2.3(a)(1)(A), effective 1 January 2026, requires every unlimited civil action for bodily injury, wrongful death or damage to personal property to be filed in the judicial district where the incident arose. Glendale sits in the North Central District, whose courthouses are the Glendale Courthouse at 600 East Broadway and the Burbank Courthouse at 300 East Olive Avenue.

More on local practice on the Glendale personal injury page, and on the law itself on the Los Angeles car accident page. The other collision types with Glendale’s own published figures: pedestrian accidents, bicycle accidents and motorcycle accidents. Mass tort claims are taken on for Glendale residents as well, and those are set out on the mass torts page.